Protecting Our Courts from Foreign Manipulation Act of 2025

— 548 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise PRIORITIZING THE PROTECTION OF PUBLIC SAFETY Ordered liberty is at risk when our citizens lack physical safety, when career criminals do not fear the law, when foreign cartels move narcotics and illegal aliens into our nation at will, and when political leaders call citizens “domestic terrorists” for exercising their constitutional rights. The Department of Justice—in partnership with state and local partners—must recommit in both word and deed to protecting public safety. The overwhelming majority of crimes in the United States are properly handled at the state and local levels,19 but the DOJ can provide critical technical support for local law enforcement and play a critical agenda-setting role. With respect to the Department’s core responsibilities—enforcing our immigration laws, combating domestic and international criminal enterprises, protecting federal civil rights, and combating foreign espionage—the federal government has primary authority and, accordingly, accountability. The evidence shows that the Biden Administration’s Department of Justice has failed to protect law-abiding citizens and has ignored its most basic obligations. It has become at once utterly unserious and dangerously politicized. Prosecution and charging decisions are infused with racial and partisan political double standards.20 Immigration laws are ignored.21 The FBI harasses protesting parents (branded “domestic terrorists” by some partisans) while working diligently to shut down politically disfavored speech on the pretext of its being “misinformation” or “disin- formation.”22 A department that prosecutes FACE Act cases while ignoring dozens of violent attacks on pregnancy care centers and/or the coordinated violation of laws that prohibit attempts to intimidate Supreme Court Justices by parading out- side of their homes23 has clearly lost its way. A department that has twice engaged in covert domestic election interference and propaganda operations—the Russian collusion hoax in 2016 and the Hunter Biden laptop suppression in 2020—is a threat to the Republic.24 l Restoring the department’s focus on public safety and a culture of respect for the rule of law is a gargantuan task that will involve at minimum four overriding actions: l Restoring the FBI’s integrity. l Renewing the DOJ’s focus on violent crime. l Dismantling domestic and international criminal enterprises. l Pursuing a national security agenda aimed at external state and non-state actors, not U.S. citizens exercising their constitutional rights. — 549 — Department of Justice RESTORING THE FBI’S INTEGRITY The FBI was founded in 1908 to “tackle national crime and security issues” when “there was hardly any systematic way of enforcing the law across this now broad landscape of America.”25 It best serves the American people when it dedicates its resources and energies to attacking violent crime,26 criminal organizations,27 child predators,28 cyber-crime, and other uniquely federal interests.29 Revelations regarding the FBI’s role in the Russia hoax of 2016, Big Tech collu- sion, and suppression of Hunter Biden’s laptop in 2020 strongly suggest that the FBI is completely out of control. To protect the Constitution, fight crime effectively, and protect the nation from foreign adversaries, the next conservative Adminis- tration should begin to restore the FBI’s domestic reputation and integrity and enhance its effectiveness in meeting actual foreign threats. To do so, the next con- servative Administration should: l Conduct an immediate, comprehensive review of all major active FBI investigations and activities and terminate any that are unlawful or contrary to the national interest.30 This is an enormous task, but it is necessary to re-earn the American people’s trust in the FBI and its work. To conduct this review, the department should detail attorney appointees with criminal, national security, or homeland security backgrounds to catalogue any questionable activities and elevate them to appropriate DOJ leadership consistent with the new chain of command (discussed below). The department should also consider issuing a public report of the findings from this review as appropriate. l Align the FBI’s placement within the department and the federal government with its law enforcement and national security purposes. DOJ veterans often opine that the FBI views itself as an independent agency—accountable to no one and on par with the Attorney General in terms of stature—but the fact remains that “[t]he Federal Bureau of Investigation is located in the Department of Justice.”31 It is not independent from the department (just as Immigration and Customs Enforcement is not independent from the Department of Homeland Security) and does not deserve to be treated as if it were. The next conservative Administration should direct the Attorney General to remove the FBI from the Deputy Attorney General’s direct supervision within the department’s organizational chart and instead place it under the general supervision of the Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division and the supervision of the Assistant Attorney General for the National Security Division, as applicable.32 This can be accomplished

— 548 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise PRIORITIZING THE PROTECTION OF PUBLIC SAFETY Ordered liberty is at risk when our citizens lack physical safety, when career criminals do not fear the law, when foreign cartels move narcotics and illegal aliens into our nation at will, and when political leaders call citizens “domestic terrorists” for exercising their constitutional rights. The Department of Justice—in partnership with state and local partners—must recommit in both word and deed to protecting public safety. The overwhelming majority of crimes in the United States are properly handled at the state and local levels,19 but the DOJ can provide critical technical support for local law enforcement and play a critical agenda-setting role. With respect to the Department’s core responsibilities—enforcing our immigration laws, combating domestic and international criminal enterprises, protecting federal civil rights, and combating foreign espionage—the federal government has primary authority and, accordingly, accountability. The evidence shows that the Biden Administration’s Department of Justice has failed to protect law-abiding citizens and has ignored its most basic obligations. It has become at once utterly unserious and dangerously politicized. Prosecution and charging decisions are infused with racial and partisan political double standards.20 Immigration laws are ignored.21 The FBI harasses protesting parents (branded “domestic terrorists” by some partisans) while working diligently to shut down politically disfavored speech on the pretext of its being “misinformation” or “disin- formation.”22 A department that prosecutes FACE Act cases while ignoring dozens of violent attacks on pregnancy care centers and/or the coordinated violation of laws that prohibit attempts to intimidate Supreme Court Justices by parading out- side of their homes23 has clearly lost its way. A department that has twice engaged in covert domestic election interference and propaganda operations—the Russian collusion hoax in 2016 and the Hunter Biden laptop suppression in 2020—is a threat to the Republic.24 l Restoring the department’s focus on public safety and a culture of respect for the rule of law is a gargantuan task that will involve at minimum four overriding actions: l Restoring the FBI’s integrity. l Renewing the DOJ’s focus on violent crime. l Dismantling domestic and international criminal enterprises. l Pursuing a national security agenda aimed at external state and non-state actors, not U.S. citizens exercising their constitutional rights.

— 703 — Department of the Treasury l The U.S. should also examine increasing or decreasing its ownership levels in these institutions in order to achieve maximum leverage. CHINA AND OTHER GEOPOLITICAL THREATS Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. The interagency Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States should realign its priorities to meet the United States’ current foreign policy threats, especially from China. On October 20, 2022, the Treasury Department, which chairs CFIUS, adopted the first-ever CFIUS Enforcement and Penalty Guidelines50 on the committee’s national security risk mitigation requirements. However, there are no clear rules that guide CFIUS on mitigation monitoring, nor is there a published penalty sched- ule to standardize accountability when CFIUS pursues a civil money penalty for violators. In addition, Treasury—as chair of the committee—runs an opaque pro- cess that biases committee procedure toward corporate interests and away from national security interests. Finally, the committee’s jurisdiction does not extend over greenfield investments that Chinese state-owned enterprises have historically pursued in the United States, which leaves America vulnerable to an instrument of Chinese economic statecraft. Given these issues, the next steps for CFIUS should be to develop a more coherent—and transparent—mitigation monitoring program to complement the enforcement guidelines, give CFIUS agencies in charge of national security con- cerns an equal voice at the table, and petition Congress to amend the law to cover Chinese greenfield investments. CFIUS should publish a penalty schedule for violations of CFIUS reporting and mitigation requirements. Publishing a penalty schedule for CFIUS violations will reduce the discretion of the committee to waive penalties or impose mere “wrist slap” costs on violators of the law. Additionally, a standardized penalty schedule would likely increase the deterrence of CFIUS enforcement by reducing the per- ception among parties to covered transactions that they can avoid enforcement by the committee or secure special exceptions based on appeals to the commit- tee’s discretion. As a legal matter—and in application by CFIUS—mitigation monitoring has developed as the Wild West. There are no clear rules that guide the entire com- mittee on mitigation monitoring, nor is there the same level of oversight or accountability within and among the agencies as applies when CFIUS reviews a transaction or when it pursues a civil money penalty. Indeed, it is a credit to transaction parties and the professionalism of the governmental officials and con- tractors who conduct mitigation monitoring on behalf of the government that, by and large, mitigation monitoring has worked adequately during the last several decades. But dependency on the personality and capabilities of individuals creates unnecessary risk both for CFIUS and for transaction parties. — 704 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise Congress should make the Department of Defense (DOD) a CFIUS co-chair with the Department of Treasury. Making DOD an official CFIUS co-chair along with Treasury will establish a balanced committee process by elevating national security interests to an equal stature. The committee is currently imbalanced toward the interests of corporate America because Treasury is the sole chair of CFIUS and, in practice, runs a process that is not fully transparent and which biases it from the national security interests represented by DOD and the Intelligence Community (IC). For example, Treasury representatives will consult with the Commerce Depart- ment and the United States Trade Representative—which tend to favor permitting covered transactions to occur with little to no mitigation requirements—and these representatives will then obscure the results and purposes of such sidebar meet- ings from DOD and IC representatives. This hampers DOD, IC, and sometimes even State Department representatives from full participation in the process or from advocating national security interests as well as they should. Greenfield Investments. Congress should close the loophole on greenfield investments and require CFIUS review of investments in U.S.-based greenfield assets by Chinese-controlled entities to assess any potential harm to U.S. national and economic security. In the 2018 Foreign Risk and Review Modernization Act (FIRRMA),51 one important category of foreign transactions left out of the bill was greenfield investments, particularly by Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs). Greenfield investments by Chinese SOEs pose a unique threat, and they should be met with the highest scrutiny by all levels of government. Greenfield investments result in the control of newly built facilities in the U.S., and they were not addressed in FIRRMA primarily because governors and state governments embrace them. That is understandable; they typically bring the promise of creating American jobs. However, the goal of such Chinese SOEs is to siphon assets, technological innovation, and influence away from U.S. businesses in order to expand the global presence of the Chinese Communist Party. While the Chinese government keeps its domestic markets largely insulated from foreign influence, it regularly invests in the U.S. and other countries under the “green- field” model. Firms fully owned by China’s Communist regime are increasingly buying land, building factories, and taking advantage of state and local tax breaks on American soil. Treasury should examine creating a school of financial warfare jointly with DOD. If the U.S. is to rely on financial weapons, tools, and strategies to prosecute international defensive and offensive objectives, it must create a specially trained group of experts dedicated to the study, training, testing, and preparedness of these deterrents. Recent experience has demonstrated that the U.S. cannot depend on the rapid development and deployment of untested, academically developed finan- cial actions, stratagems, and weapons on an ad hoc basis.